Songs without words

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Sun Apr 25 14:27:46 UTC 2010


At 10:08 AM -0400 4/25/10, Geoff Nathan wrote:
>I'm not sure if I'm older than Larry (and I'm certainly not as old
>as my old room-mate Wilson) but I remember Canadian Sunset, which
>hit the charts in 1956. Arranged by Hugo Winterhalter--a name from
>the distant past if there ever was one.

It's not a question of age--I was probably listening to more AM radio
in 1956 than at any time since--but memory; I only faintly recall
that Canadian Sunset.  Just checking wikipedia, I see that in the
film "A Summer Place" (1959), the recording of the theme (written by
Max Steiner, who had earlier thrown together a score for some obscure
movie set in rural Georgia during the Civil War era) was made
by...Hugo Winterhalter, although it was Percy Faith who cashed in.
(It's nice to know that the Theme, in the same Percy Faith rendition,
made it to the top of the charts in Italy too, but under the name
"Scandalo Al Sole".)

LH



>Geoffrey S. Nathan
>Faculty Liaison, C&IT
>and Associate Professor, Linguistics Program
>+1 (313) 577-1259 (C&IT)
>+1 (313) 577-8621 (English/Linguistics)
>
>----- "Laurence Horn" <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:
>
>>  From: "Laurence Horn" <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>>  To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>>  Sent: Sunday, April 25, 2010 9:48:16 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
>>  Subject: Re: Songs without words
>>
>>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>  -----------------------
>>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>  Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>>  Subject:      Re: Songs without words
>>
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>  At 6:50 AM +0100 4/25/10, Robin Hamilton wrote:
>>  >(I am old, admittedly not quite as old as Wilson, but dredging
>>  through the
>>  >tattered remnants of my memory, I can barely recall a time when a
>>  *purely
>>  >instrumental* recording achieved popular success in the UK.  That
>>  would be
>>  >in the early sixties, with the Shadows, issued on a 45 rpm vinyl
>>  disk.  Yes,
>>  >children, there was a time ...  And at that, the Shadows only made it
>>  into
>>  >the Top 10 since they were Cliff Richards' backing group.)
>>  >
>>  The first such hit song without words I recall making it to the top
>>  of the [cispondial] pops was Percy Faith's "Theme from A Summer
>>  Place", back in the early 60s.
>>
>>  LH
>>
>>  ------------------------------------------------------------
>>  The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
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